There’s a cluster of papers from 2013–2017 (Horne et al., Fang et al., summarized in Medvedev’s “Anatomy of Reddit” survey) that all find the same thing: comment score drops hard with time since the post went up, and the top comments are almost always early ones. All of that is pre-redesign, pre-API-changes, pre whatever the feed does now. I want to see if it still holds and how much the window differs by sub.

Method, locked in before I pull: my hypothesis is that top-level comments made within the first 2 hours after a post goes up get higher median scores and are more likely to reach 10+ upvotes than comments made later, in every subreddit studied, with the size of the effect differing by subreddit type.

The data will be the 300 most recent posts that are 7 to 90 days old and have at least 3 comments in each of r/books, r/gardening, r/personalfinance, r/HomeImprovement, r/Cooking, r/travel, r/technology, r/movies and r/unpopularopinion, with their full comment trees (every load more expanded), collected through the official Reddit API at the end of October 2026.

Posts under 7 days old are left out so scores have settled. Deleted and removed comments and replies by the original poster are excluded. I’ll report median score and the share of comments with 10+ upvotes by time since post (0–1h, 1–3h, 3–6h, 6–12h, 12–24h, 24h+), for top-level comments, per subreddit and pooled, plus a straight first-2-hours vs later comparison. Any group with fewer than 100 comments gets flagged and I won’t draw conclusions from it.

I checked each sub’s settings first and dropped any that force a non-default comment sort, since the early-comment advantage depends on “best” sort. That ruled out r/changemyview (it forces Q&A). I also dropped r/buildapc because it gets so many posts that the API listing only reaches back about a week, so there was nothing old enough to sample.

Known weaknesses I already see: scores are the fuzzed visible numbers, not true votes. Excluding deleted comments probably biases toward “safe” comments. “Best” sort itself creates a feedback loop where early comments get more views, so I’m measuring the outcome of the system, not comment quality. In busy subs, “300 most recent posts 7–90 days old” in practice means posts from the last couple of weeks, not a spread across three months. If anyone sees a bigger problem than those, I’d rather hear it now than after a day of API calls.

I’ll post results in this thread. Scripts and CSVs will be public.

Why is this?

This thought occurred to me as I've been searching for something of really low consequence: what gifts are "loved" in the video game Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave. I feel like in the past, I'd be able to easily do a Google search of Reddit and come across some Redditor who has spent way too much time experimenting who shares their results. Now, I find a highly upvoted post like this that features a clearly incomplete "guide" - if you research the user who posted this more, you'll see it's a 10 month old account with hidden history that is spamming their stupid website across Fire Emblem subs. The website is so low effort: it claims to be a work in progress, but I tried to use it, like the idiot that I am, and it's clear that the owner has no actual plans to update it. Some of the sections blatantly feature question marks that could be easily solved by experimenting the item-in-question.

What am I expecting on Reddit? Something to the level of the personalfinance sub wiki: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index

Just people/peoples who have done way too much research who came together and put together an evergreen resource that is actually helpful towards the subject matter.

I find this pattern to be everywhere: I've been into trading card games (TCGs) for a while and I feel like pre-COVID, I could go on the pkmntcg sub, ask a question about some strategic, fundamental element of the game and get a "real" answer. Like, "what should I do to get better" would be met with resources about improvement, good advice on how to actually improve, etc. Nowadays, if you write a sufficiently long post you get the "I'm happy for you or I'm sad that happened but I ain't reading that" meme, which is just a completely useless comment - I can't find the post but I recall someone being thoughtful that wrote a long form post that was met with that format.

More importantly, I guess, where are we supposed to go for "good" information these days? Going back to my video game example, even before Reddit existed, there was Gamefaqs, but people rarely make guides there now. I hate it, but everything is Youtube, Tiktok, etc.

Is it just doomed? Are we destined to die to fake bot engagement that just makes the online footprint stupider and stupider by the day?

I’ve always noticed how cities can go through different “moods” depending on the day of the week. Sometimes people are really positive and chatty; other times, everyone just seems a little off and distrustful. I’ve wondered whether the same phenomenon happens on social networks.

This morning, I opened Reddit and left a few comments on whatever threads happened to appear in my feed. No different from most days.

A few hours later, my inbox was flooded with replies from people picking the stupidest arguments with me, being weirdly condescending for no reason, and correcting me on things they were straight-up wrong about.

I know this all fits the general stereotype of “Redditors suck,” but something feels particularly off today. I’ve been browsing threads from the past 24 hours, and the comment sections seem unusually argumentative and hostile.

Of course, this could just be selection bias based on the subreddits Reddit happened to recommend me today, but I’m curious whether anyone else has noticed the same thing.

I deleted Instagram because I wanted to spend less time on social media and stay updated on what’s happening around the world without all the unnecessary distractions. That’s why I use Reddit—for information, discussions, news, and different perspectives.

I have absolutely nothing against women expressing themselves or making their own choices. Everyone has the right to decide what they want to post. **But shouldn’t there also be space for people who want a platform focused on information and meaningful discussions, without constantly coming across nudity or sexualised content?**

There are already platforms and communities where people can share that kind of content with an audience that actively chooses to engage with it. Why can’t Reddit also preserve a space where users can exchange knowledge, discuss world events, and learn from one another without having such content appear unexpectedly in their feeds?

This isn’t about controlling anyone’s choices. It’s about respecting everyone’s preferences, too. **Freedom of expression should go hand in hand with freedom of choice—including the choice to use a platform for information without being exposed to content you never came looking for.**

I just want one place where I can stay informed about the world without feeling like I’m scrolling through another version of Instagram.

Reddit allows users to hide their post and comment history, which can make it harder for others to identify patterns of trolling, misinformation, disinformation, and FUD across different communities.

What if Reddit used a cross-subreddit reporting system to identify accounts that repeatedly engage in demonstrable bad-faith behaviour?

For example, if users across multiple unrelated subreddits independently report an account for persistent trolling or deliberately spreading misinformation, Reddit could flag the account for review. If the pattern is substantiated, the account could temporarily lose the ability to hide its post and comment history.

The point wouldn’t be to punish people for unpopular opinions or honest mistakes. The system would need safeguards against brigading, coordinated false reports, and retaliation, along with an appeal process and a way to restore the feature after a set period.

I think this could make it easier to recognize repeat offenders without removing profile privacy features for everyone.

Would restricting profile privacy for repeat offenders be a reasonable moderation tool, or would the risk of abuse outweigh the potential benefits?

I’ve had a few viral posts and it’s crazy how many ppl comment into the void. Once a post has over about 100 distinct comments (not simply replies) your new comment is not going to be seen. And generally, the OP has stopped reading comments after about a couple hundred lol. Yet, the comments flood in.

I’m not sure how many ppl are aware that no one (except for maybe the op) will read their comment and they dont care and are just writing it out to practice their articulation, and how many are oblivious to the reality it’s not going to be seen.

Also, interesting, is when someone angered by the post will comment like the 478th comment (so in other words it wont be seen by others) and it will be a comment meant to try to shame the op publicly in the third person, like “can you believe how dumb the op is for thinking x?” Which is ironic cause when you’re the 478th comment, the only person who might read your comment is the op themself. So you failed at your goal and merely opened yourself up to a one on one fight with op.

EDIT:

I just checked the “insights” and it says “this post is the number 1 post on r/theoryofreddit today” which makes me feel good but also means this sub needs to grow lol, since the top post only has 18 likes at this point. Anyway, hope your comment doesnt get buried in this super viral post, lost in the sea of 9 comments 😂

I don't think blocking someone because they argue in bad faith means you're creating an ideological bubble.

I'm perfectly willing to listen to people I disagree with. What I don't want is to repeatedly deal with someone who misrepresents what I'm saying, refuses to acknowledge points that have been made, moves the goalposts, gaslights, or just seems determined to argue with reality.

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether someone is being deliberately dishonest or is simply being incredibly stupid. But if the conversation is going nowhere, I don't think I need to figure out which one it is. If the line is blurry, I'm okay siding with my own peace of mind.

And there's a practical benefit to blocking: I won't have to deal with this person again in the future. I don't have to recognize their username six months from now and wonder whether I want to waste another hour having the same argument.

I trust my current self to look out for my future self.

If someone makes a good-faith argument that challenges my beliefs, I'm happy to hear it. If nobody is making good-faith arguments, that's a completely different problem.

An ideological bubble is refusing to encounter ideas you disagree with. Blocking someone who consistently makes conversation unproductive is deciding that your time and attention are valuable.

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a shift in comment volume, voting speed, and sentiment across several high-traffic, default-style subreddits (r/all, r/popular).
Anecdotally, threads covering political or sensitive news items seem to feature rapid spikes in newly created or low-karma accounts, noticeable patterns in repeated phrasing, and non-standard vote ratios (e.g., highly upvoted top-level comments paired with heavily downvoted replies that challenge them).
While shifts in public sentiment or user base demographics occur naturally over time, distinguishing between organic user migration and coordinated/automated account networks (astroturfing) is challenging without backend access.
I’m interested in the structural and analytical side of how Reddit handles—and how users identify—these trends:
1. Detection Metrics: Beyond standard account age and low karma, what specific behavioral signals (e.g., cross-subreddit posting frequency, timing patterns, vote velocity) are most reliable for identifying astroturfing networks?
2. Platform Countermeasures: Has Reddit’s modern spam/bot filtering (including recent API changes and automated moderation updates) altered how vote manipulation or bot networks operate on the platform?
3. Data Availability: Are there public tools, third-party datasets, or academic methodologies currently available to map and verify automated network activity across the site?
Curious to hear from moderators and users who track metadata or run analytics on community engagement trends.

I used Gemini to draft the language as I’m second language English . But it’s my personal observation

So has anyone else noticed how much harder it’s gotten for genuine new users to actually get started here? How do you think Reddit could fix the onboarding process without opening the floodgates to bots?

The original point of the voting system was pretty straightforward: upvote stuff that contributes to the discussion, downvote spam, scams, or blatant rule-breaking. Disagreeing with someone wasn't supposed to be a downvote reason but over time, that’s completely shifted. Votes are basically just an agree/disagree button now, and because your ability to actually participate in most subs is tied directly to your karma, it creates a weird dynamic for anyone with a new account.... i think it's mainly due to reddits LACK of information behind this because they assumed it SHOULD have been self explanatory. There's only ONE small section that's HARD to find that explains exactly what the voting system is about. I've even HAD TO ARGUE WITH DOZENS OF PEOPLE that swore I was stupid and didn't know what the hell I'm talkin about - INCLUDING MULTIPLE MODERATORS WHO WERE ALSO VIOLATING ALMOST EVERY MOD RULE AND ABUSING THEIR POWER IN A WAY THAT ENABLES AND ENCOURAGES AND REWARDS THIS EXACT SAME BAD BEHAVIOR WHILE PUNISHING THOSE SHOWING THE PROPER BEHAVIOR, WHICH THEY ALSO ARGUED - until I showed them that page to prove it... which is exactly why accounts that are actually BOTS or doing the OPPOSITE behavior as they intended for the karma system to portray are basically the majority of redditors that are able to freely use reddit as they please.... while REPEATED admin reports about BOTH of these behaviors remain unanswered for months and years, which ALSO contributes to this.

​A lot of subreddits set karma and account age minimums. It makes sense on paper but in all reality all itndoes is it lock new users out of standard discussions. If you're new, you end up forced into a handful of low-barrier subs just to get enough karma to participate elsewhere.

....which leads me to the next problem. The problem is those open subs are often filled with low-effort posts or hivemind mentalities where saying the slightly wrong thing or asking a basic question gets you downvoted into negative numbers. Once your karma goes negative, AutoMod auto-removes your posts in most places, and you're pretty much stuck.

​Even trying to build karma normally by posting good content in open groups gets people flagged or accused of karma farming. It creates this weird paradox where to gain access to normal spaces, you almost have to act like a troll or just post effortless crowd-pleasing memes instead of engaging genuinely

​A lot of older accounts say "we all had to earn it," but the platform isn't the same as it was 5 or 10 years ago. Back then, you could drop into small communities, comment normally, and build a profile without running into aggressive AutoMod filters, karma walls, or mass-downvote bots. The onboarding experience now is night and day compared to how it used to be.

​It feels like relying purely on an easily manipulated downvote counter isn't a great way to judge whether an account is real or posting in good faith. Account standing would probably make more sense if it was judged on actual rule adherence, account verification, and behavior history rather than whether a specific thread liked your opinion???? I've experienced this EXACT issue for YEARS where content that should've been downvoted and removed actually gets MASS UPVOTED despite meeting EVERY SINGLE CRITERIA for downvoting, being removed, suspended or banned from the group or even from REDDIT.... while content that should've NEVER been downvoted because it didn't meet the criteria gets MASS DOWNVOTED, REMOVED BY MODS, THEIR ACCOUNT SUSPENDED OR BANNED AND MORE while those that SHOULD'VE had that done to them? Receive THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE... especially if a mod does or doesn't like you or you do or don't stroke their ego... don't even THINK about correcting them or embarrassing them, either... theyll get you SHADOW BANNED COMPLETELY....

Traditionally if someone makes a bad post, people downvote, and the post stops showing up. The good quality rises to the top.

Now, although the site seems to be overrun by bots, posts that rise to the top repeatedly have something deliberately wrong with them. It can be a spelling mistake, clearly untrue information in the post title, something flawed in the post that makes it deliberately hard to interact with, or something similar.

In the past, when that happened, people would downvote it, someone else (or the same person) would make a quick correction, and then repost it with the correction. That repost would become the main thread.

Now though, either people aren't downvoting it, or the website is ignoring those downvotes and deliberately allowing the posts to show up.

There are other explanations of course, it could be bots upvoting bots, leading to poor post quality. In terms of engagement metrics though, since other sites have fallen prey to the line of thinking that any engagement is good engagement, it is possible. What do you think?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1wuxqn4/chinese_startup_behind_laser_mosquito_killer/

^ There's probably an obvious answer, but here's an example

At the time of posting that post has around 450 upvotes with 89% upvoted, and the top voted comment has around 150 upvotes and points out:

Also, this is an ad

He's pointing out the post is an advertisement.

By my math, the actual post only has around 60 downvotes or so. But why is not a greater portion of the 150 people who upvoted the comment, that would then downvote the post? Of course it would never be 1:1, but I would have thought more people who realize the post is bad would then downvote it.

And this is just one example, I see it all the time a prominent comment points out the post is garbage (misinformation, misleading, botted, spam, AI, etc.), but the comment has way more upvotes than (I would have thought) the post would get in downvotes.

Is it just me or shouldn't people be downvoting what they realize is trash? What do you think?

EDIT: A few conversations here have shifted my thinking a bit.

I started this thinking Reddit mainly needed to get better at serving the right content. Better algorithms, better discovery, better recommendations.

But maybe there’s a more interesting answer: give users much more control over building their own feed.

Not just follow/unfollow. Let me filter and sort Home by things like recency, rising, popularity, comments, post type etc. Let me turn down the giant subs without leaving them entirely. Filter, not unfollow. Sort, not just scroll.

I’m constantly culling bigger, broader subs because otherwise they overwhelm the t by e feed.

If they made that functionality front and centre and promoted it, I think it could be far more useful, and much more uniquely Reddit, than another generic “For You” feed.

There’s a commercial upside too. Someone actively telling Reddit what they want more and less of is giving incredibly strong interest data. Better feeds for users, better signals for advertisers, potentially more time spent here.

Reddit doesn’t need better algorithm for discovery, it needs a better way to empower people to discover Reddit for themselves!
______________________________________

I’ve been on Reddit for 13 years, follow 100+ communities (this number moves up and down), have about 5k karma and I’m mostly a lurker but comment a lot.

So Reddit should have a pretty fucking good idea of what I’m interested in by now.
I did a quick check of my feeds instead of just relying on the feeling.

On Home, I scrolled through 94 organic posts. They came from just 42 of the 108 communities I follow, but the top 10 subs made up more than half the feed.

Then I checked Popular. Much more variety, but weirdly not much better.

Very little exact overlap with the communities I actually follow (which is good), plenty of broad “you like gaming, here are random gaming subs”** **type recommendations, and a lot of content that just feels interchangeable. Memes, “viral” clips, screenshots from other platforms, reposts, recycled formats, generic “interesting” content.

And I think that’s the thing I’ve been struggling to put my finger on.
Popular isn’t boring because it lacks variety. It’s boring because so much of the variety feels interchangeable.

Maybe this is nostalgia, but I remember those giant front-page subs feeling different too. Even when Reddit kept serving the same communities, the actual content felt fresher. The world has moved on, but [r/pics](r/pics) and [r/funny](r/funny) posting the same old same bullshit make up a huge portion of the discovery feeds.

Reddit still has something incredibly valuable that most other platforms don’t: actual communities full of people who know and care about specific things.

For me this is: Home brewing. Strategy games. Gardening. Personal finance. Fashion. TV shows. Cooking. Restaurants and bars in my area.

It feels like Reddit should be unbelievably good at saying:

“You seem interested in this. There’s a great conversation happening over here that you haven’t seen yet.”

Instead Home feels too narrow, and Popular/New feels broad but shallow.

So genuinely: how do you use Reddit for discovery?

Does Popular or New still lead you into interesting new communities or conversations?

Has anyone else started feeling like Reddit is enormous while somehow showing you less of itself?

I get enough 'mindless engagement' from literally every other site, app, and platoform with which i interact. Reddit is the one place i can engage with real humans -or at least sufficiently human-like bots. :-)

This incessant push toward mindless engagement for the sake of engagement without any consideration for the quality of engagement is what is destroying the web and making every platform indistinguishable from every other platform.

Shouldn't Reddit be leaning into it's primary differentiator -real conversations, arguments, expertise, and long-form user generated content, rather than the same engagement bait that we can find everywhere else.

I'd make the argument that any growth in Reddit will not come from a quiz asking how many polar bears I think i can defeat with a fire axe, but from people fleeing other sites looking for something that still feels like human interaction.

When people inevitably rebel against all of these algorithmically-chosen-engagement-funnels, Reddit will either be in a prime position as one of the last human-led holdouts, or it could squander it's inherent advantage trying to become like everyone else as newer sites with a human-first, quality-engagement ethos become the next generation of top platforms.

I was a mod in the past. And looking at the current generation of mods, I fail to comprehend why they even bother doing that? Why do any kind of task if you do not intend to do it correctly? Because I believe that not doing the task at all, or letting someone more competent do it instead is always a better choice than doing a sloppy job. So, I just had to speak up. Most likely it will go in vain, but maybe someone will listen and improve.

The first and the most obvious sign of a slopmod is punishing the people because the mod is too lazy to do his job. A person creates a post that is not against the rules. Some people make comments that are against the rules. And then mod closes the post, not because it was violating anything, but... because there is too much comments breaking the rules. So instead of doing literally only thing he needed to do - moderating, the mod decides to punish a legit OP and all the users who were engaged in a totally legit discussion and did not broke any rules. If you are too lazy to moderate... maybe just don't? Quit, do something else instead. But do not deny people from discussing interesting subject just because of your laziness.

Anothter lovely example are the mods who write extremely vague rules, and add "if unsure, ask the mods". And then don't answer to modmail. At all. But somehow still find time to remove posts, that would not been created if they answered the modmail, directly asking them "if this post can be created or it will break the rules". Many do not answer even if you simply want to clarify something about the rules.

Not explaining the reasons for removal is nothing but lazy. How do you expect for your users to improve and correct the part that breaks the rules, if they don't even know which rule they are broken, and why exactly? What would you feel if you would recieve a fine, but without any explanations what for? It's not that hard to attach automated message with at least saying which rule was broken, and, if necessary - briefly explaining why.

Then, comes the rules. The rules are the law of this land. And there is nothing more hummiliating for a mod than to punish someone who did not actually break them. You did not account for something? Your fault. There is a loophole? Your fault. In reality of civilized world the court say that anything that does not break the rules are allowed. So, if your role models aren't Putin or Trump, you should accept your mistake, issue no punishment, but rewrite the rules to make sure it will not happen again. Learning to lose and having the humility to accept defeat is important. If you are not a tyrant, of course.

More rules. Subrules for rules. Sometimes over 50% possible themes that are directly related to the subreddit theme are forbidden because mods personally dislike them. If you are aiming to build a community, and not a regime, stop forbidding things that you personally dislike. It does not matter what you think or feel about those. The community has votes, they will sort it out. Your job is to keep things secure, and not to role-play a moral police from Temu.

Yes. The job is unpaid. Yes, you are volounteers. But no job done is often better than bad job done. By accepting the role and not doing what is required you hurting the community more than if you did not had the role. It is fine to step down when you feel like you can no longer handle the pressure. I did that and have no regrets for giving power in hands of people who have time and energy to do the task properly.

It was especially ironic that when i make the post with these questions in moderator's sub, asking them if they really think that they are helping reddit instead of hurting it this way, it was instantly removed, without any reason listen, and modmail was ignored - basicly proving half of the points that i made.

So in the end, i believe that the problem is that people giving moderator rights to certified narcissists, who seek that kind of a power only to abuse it. I even wrore a test for the song about that:  https://youtu.be/6t2iTWeW3r4

And what do you think about this? Do communities benefit from having a sloppy tyranny?

From a pragmatic pov, I understand how from a mod pov, maybe any Reddit space that allowed this would just turn into a shit show. Maybe?

Anyways, I love the concept of this sub.

But given real world influence in the context of virtual warfare/propoganda, I sometimes think this sub falls short in the haughtily academic reality of things; the socio political dynamics that this sub talks about in the context of censorship inevitably lead to real world politics.

Is there a similar sub to this one where maybe the mods take one for the team and deal with the shit show?

Am I naive in thinking the shit show is theoretically manageable?

I don’t know how else to word this lol; I really like this sub, but am often perturbed by how we don’t allow politics, given how real word geopolitics is one of the main driving causes of the subjects this space discusses.

Where also it’s interesting that it is ok to talk poltics here in the context of the oligarchy, but not of more formally recognized forms of governance.

Also I asked this in find a Reddit and got nothing.

Also also fml if somebody views this as me taking negatively about this sub, so help me god…

I've looked at other posts, so I know that whenever someone says something like this, the answer is almost always something along the lines of "People are just as stupid here than they are everywhere else" but I think that is just due to the Dunning-Kruger Effect happening all over again, because you know more, you would think you are as ignorant if not more than other people.

For instance, if I go outside and take a random poll even in the "young, tech-savy, college educated" environments (another big counterpoint used by the "we are all stupid" camp) and ask a random simple academic literacy question such as "what is epistemology" I would bet that less than 10% would know what epistemology is, let alone describe it or list any number of its schools of thought. But, on reddit, this seems common knowledge, no matter what sub-reddit you are in.

The examples are endless, I think its just because of reddit's anonymity feature and the fact that only 1% of reddit users have ever posted at least once in their lives that people seem to not realise that.

The proof is in the making, my point is academic literacy and not academic knowledge, On reddit, it doesn't matter what degree you chose out to be you would at least have heard (instead of knowing it very well) of phenomenology and factor analysis, while in university setting, less than 5% of humanities majors would know what factor analysis is and vice versa for formal sciences majors with factor analysis

I keep wondering why Reddit got so damn stupid.

Part of it is deliberate enshittification and bots. That part isn’t even up for debate.

Part of it is just numbers. More people online means more people talking, which means a bigger pile of stupid gets dumped into the street.

But I think the real poison is Internet points.

Every upvote, every little number beside your name becomes a marker of status. And if you want more status, you have to appeal to more people. So people keep widening the net, sanding off the edges, making everything easy to swallow.

And eventually you start appealing to the stupid.

I’ve spent 10 years experimenting with my own Reddit community, and I think there are some pretty simple ways to beat this stuff back:

1. Disallow memes. They’re low effort by definition, and low effort attracts stupidity like flies.

2. Remove short comments. If somebody can’t scrape together 20 characters, there’s a pretty good chance they haven’t scraped together much of a thought either.

3. Demand attribution. Either you made the thing or you credit whoever did. If somebody throws out information with no source at all, get rid of it.

4. Retire repetitive posts. If the same damn subject keeps getting dragged back onto the floor, eventually you ban new threads about it. We heard you. Move on.

5. Require topical flair. It’s a tiny barrier, but even a tiny barrier makes people stop for 2 seconds and THINK. If somebody can’t even apply the right flair, remove the post. They obviously didn’t bother reading the rules before barging through the door.

6. Disallow gatekeeping. Moderators and admins enforce the rules. Everybody else can knock it off with deciding who belongs, what counts, and what other people are allowed to enjoy.

I’ve used these rules on r/Sizz, and I think they’re a big reason the place has kept its quality since 2017 instead of slowly turning into sludge.

I've started to notice a lot of top posts on very popular subreddits belong to what I can only conclude are PR accounts.

These accounts usually follow a pattern of posting "organic" content on popular subreddits, which is often feeding headlines onto 'news' subreddits to attract maximum engagement. I've noticed this also includes feeding very polarising headlines into politically charged subreddits in order to generate maximum engagement.

The second posting habit in this pattern then involves posting what are very clearly press releases from what you can safely assume is their client, usually on relevant subreddits which they've often secured mod status on. It can be ruled out that these are just 'superfans' who push press releases from their favourite fandom in between feeding the latest controversial headline into a politics sub, as these patterns are consistent.

I would name and shame a few of these users I've been following I suspect of being shadow PR accounts but I don't want to violate any rules.

Is this something that is well known? I know Reddit is becoming an increasingly recognised medium for marketing and comms agencies, but this specific and, I would argue, deceptive form of PR doesn't seem to be discussed much anywhere.

Thoughts?

I’m not arguing that Reddit should be forced to host every post or that every moderation decision is automatically unlawful. But I do think the usual response, “Reddit is a private company, so it can do whatever it wants,” is too simplistic for a platform with this much influence over online discussion.

Reddit has become one of the internet’s main places for people to ask questions, exchange information, find communities, and discuss public issues. In many subjects, Reddit threads are among the first results people encounter when searching online. That gives the platform, and the systems controlling visibility, real influence over what information people actually see.

The problem is not that upvotes and downvotes exist. The problem is that voting is tied directly to visibility. A post or comment can be buried not because it is false, harmful, or irrelevant, but because it triggers a negative reaction or conflicts with a community’s prevailing opinion. Users often treat voting as a like or dislike system, even though the result is effectively editorial. It determines whether a contribution is seen at all.

Moderation adds another layer. Moderators can remove posts, ban users, and shape the rules of entire communities, often with limited explanation and inconsistent appeals processes. Some communities are run fairly. Others can become small private fiefdoms where disagreement with the moderators or the dominant viewpoint is enough to get someone silenced.

I’m not saying Reddit has no right to moderate. I’m asking whether a platform with Reddit’s scale and influence should have stronger obligations around transparency, consistent enforcement, explanations for removals, and meaningful appeals.

The legal and policy question is whether Reddit should still be treated as an ordinary private forum when its network effects and search visibility make it one of the most influential public discussion platforms online. Could its market power, ranking systems, and moderation structure raise legitimate antitrust or consumer protection concerns?

If the answer is no, I’d like to understand why. If the answer might be yes, what would the relevant market even be? Social media, online forums, community based discussion, or something narrower? What evidence would be necessary to show actual market power or consumer harm?

I’m interested in serious answers, including arguments against my position. I’m not claiming that every unpopular post deserves to stay up. I’m arguing that Reddit’s influence deserves more scrutiny than the simple phrase “private company” usually receives.

I think I understand why they did it?

In terms of practicality, with this many users, coming up with a unique account name must be tricky, and it helps new user retention to make it easy to just go with a default account name then change your display name.

From a cynical standpoint, it's just become slightly more effort to check whether a given user, when creating their account, considered it representative of their personality and intention to contribute, or just anonymous and disposable. As a mod, I've never made a judgement based solely on 'Adjective-noun-numbers', but it did prove a reliable indicator that it's worth a quick look to see if they might be arguing in bad faith. Any action that makes it harder for users to tell when a bot or a troll is baiting them is going to raise engagement.

The way they've done it though is really rough, and I have no explanation for that. I quickly changed mine around a few times for screenshots, and there was no restriction or cooldown on doing so. Even in the minute that I was taking them I kept my display pic, but it looks like it would have been very easy to change the name and the pic to start impersonating anyone, even reddit itself.

Pictures show:

1) they didn't exclude u/reddit

2) a beautiful real screenshot of a mod comment I'd recently made in a community I was once 3-day banned from, displaying as u/reddit

3) they didn't exclude u/admin

4) they didn't exclude u/RedditCareResources

5) they changed the field from 30 to 90 characters, which starts to break the UI on the first comment

So I'm keen to hear thoughts on the rationale for the change in the first place, but also on the way it's been implemented. I'm wondering whether it was rushed for some reason, or run like an open beta for users to playtest out the bugs, or just given very little forethought.

I realized that over the last year or so I spend more time than I'd like to admit just collapsing lazy GIF only or single word responses on Reddit when I'm trying to learn more about something or see what others reallythink about a topic or news item just to see what everyone is saying.

I think the GIF picker in the comment box was the tipping point - that or just my age, lol. But when a reaction costs one click and zero words, and no real effort, a lot of people who would have upvoted and just moved on now leave a reply instead. The reply gets a few upvotes because it's funny for a hot minute, so it sits above the comment that actually answers the question. Sorting by "best" doesn't help because "best" is measuring a different thing than "contributes to the discussion."

Some of us remember that the culture of Reddit used to have a fix for this: "This." got downvoted on sight, because the upvote button *was* the way to say "this." That norm didn't survive the app generation and now the reaction GIF is the new "This."

So... my questions.

• Is this just me yelling for people to "get off my (virtual) lawn!"
• Have any subs found a moderation approach that works, short of banning GIF comments outright? Some subs turn the picker off entirely which seems to be the only thing that sticks.
• Is there a version of "best" sorting that would surface the answer over the reaction, or is the reaction genuinely what most readers want?

Full disclosure, because it's the reason I'm thinking about this: I got tired enough of the collapse ritual and because RES doesn't seem to work/supported any more I built a browser extension to do it for me with some help from claude. It folds GIF-only replies, stock phrases, bare links, bot replies, and copypasta, leaves a badge saying why, and never impactsa comment with real words in it. It's free and open source, and I'm not here to sell it, but the first day of running it was genuinely surprising: on busy threads it's collapsing 20 to 40 comments a page on some subs and I'm already in the thousands of total collapsed. (Ahhhhh, much better....)

So I figured I'd ask the sub if this is as widespread an issue as it feels from my side or if I just made a little something to help with my own neurosis, lol.

Source, if anyone wants to see how it decides: https://github.com/recruiterguy/not-this

If you want to install the current version I just pushed to the Chrome store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/not-this/dafiegfbpcopimapifpcnfoklcajldjc

Edit (v1.2.1): Thanks for all the ideas in here - a bunch of them made it into an update:

• Reply chains (off by default) - folds pun threads, "and my axe", and song lyrics posted a line at a time. The first comment stays visible and the chain collapses from the reply under it. Thanks u/cybersaurus, u/BanjoBaedling, u/Unorigina1Name and u/CurvySexretLady
• Your own patterns - add your own phrases, one per line. rock and stone* catches comments that start with it, *and my axe* catches any that mention it. There's also a box to test a comment and see which line would catch it. Regex works too if that's your thing. Thanks u/854490
• Always show list - usernames that never get collapsed, so you can keep the bots you actually like. Thanks u/archimedeancrystal
• Quieter "Show them" button - no more emergency flare. Also u/archimedeancrystal
• "Rock and Stone", "For Karl" and "and my sword" added to the built-in list
• Firefox, including Firefox for Android - submitted and waiting on Mozilla's review. Thanks u/Minuettes_Disciple and u/johannthegoatman

The Chrome update is rolling out through the Web Store now. Still free, still open source, still zero network requests, still built with Claude's help. Code's on GitHub if you want to see how any of it works: https://github.com/recruiterguy/not-this

TLDR: I don't block users for disagreeing with me, but if you can't defend yourself against the comments by someone who blocked you, you might as well prevent them from interacting with your posts and comments in the first place.

In 2022, Reddit extended the blocking feature to prevent the blocked user from responding to the blocker's posts and comments at all. Before then, it only prevented the blocker from being notified by your responses and hid your content from them, but you could still respond and others could see your responses.

From what I understand, this change is intended to prevent users from cross-subreddit hounding. However, it has the side effect that someone can say something bad and untrue about you and you can not defend yourself because they have blocked you.

In a debate, the final word now belongs to the person who pushed the block button first, not the one with the best arguments. Corporate accounts can use it to prevent criticism. In effect, this lets non-moderators "backseat moderate" their own posts, except they can not remove existing comments.

I do not block users out of disagreement. If I think they are wrong, I refute their point (the top of Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement). However, the 2022 blocking system would let them comment something on my future posts without me being able to counter-argue. To the reader, it would look like they have won the argument based on merit, given that blocks are not publicly visible, when in actuality, they silenced their opponent.

So if they block me, I am left with no choice but to block them back to pre-emptively prevent them from interacting with my content at all. I metaphorically pull the plug.

If they are not interested in a two-way debate, there shall be no debate at all.

I hereby release this post into the public domain (CC0 1.0).